What Price Democracy? Conservatives fined by the Electoral Commission for #ToryElectionFraud

The Conservative Party has been fined £70,000 by the Electoral Commission for breaking election expense rules. The commission’s report highlights “numerous failures” in reporting spending on three by-elections in 2014 and the 2015 General Election.

These included missing payments of £104,000 – and £118,000 that was either not reported or incorrectly reported.

In a statement the Electoral Commission said :

“The investigation concluded that there were significant failures by the Party to report accurately on how much it spent on campaigning at three by-elections in 2014 and at the 2015 UK Parliamentary general election.

Separately, payments worth up to £118,124 were either not reported to the Commission or were incorrectly reported by the party. A portion of this amount should have been included in the Party’s return but wasn’t. Another portion was put into the Party’s return when it was candidate spending in a number of constituencies where the Party spent money promoting individual candidates.

In addition, the Party did not include the required invoices or receipts for 81 payments to the value of £52,924.

Finally, the Party failed to maintain records explaining the amounts it invoiced to candidates in three 2014 by-elections, for work on their campaigns. Therefore the accuracy of the amounts could not be verified.”

This comes after 2 Tory MPs were arrested, cautioned & questioned for the offence. 12 more MPs face the same fate. Tory PM Theresa May’s own Chief of Staff Nick Timothy has also been implicated in this scandal. After stealing 29 marginal seats from the Liberal Democrats& the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Theresa May has now criminally blocked the voters for those parties having their democratic voices heard in the post Brexit settlement.

The Conservatives said they had accepted last March they had made “an administrative error”. If it was an administrative error are they Incompetent? or Are they just dishonest ? and after the Police inquiry that is still ongoing, which if found guilty will mean more by-elections, surely they should be forced to pay for the campaigns for the other candidates who stood against them, as if the Tories hadn’t have cheated there would be no reason for a by-election.